Study Task 2: Reading and Understanding Texts

The text that I read for my subject was Robert McKee's Story. This is a very definitive book on the craft of storywriting. I specifically read the sections about character in which he makes some very interesting and useful points.

'True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.'

This will be a really good and useful quote. In this section he was pointing out the difference between characterisation and true character. He is saying how all characters have the key observable qualities and then who they really are as a person. Their decisions under pressure show the audience what they are really like. And when other characters and they acknowledge it, that is when they develop from it.

'The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.'

This quote stresses the importance of character arcs to make the writing of a much higher standard. This all links to my theme very well since it is talking specifically about how characters need to arc and that it can be for better or worse. The characters I will be looking at (Walter White, Long John Silver, ect.) are not what we would class as good people. They go down rather destructive paths and become darker. McKee's point about revealing true character implies that this dark nature was there all along, it just took the pressure of a situation to force the character to reveal it.